Shurmur Talks About Eagles Challenge Process

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – As Packers wide receiver came down with what was ruled reception in the Eagles 27-13 win on Sunday, replays clearly showed that he did not get both feet in bounds. Anyone who was watching in Philadelphia on television screamed the same thing, “throw the challenge flag!” The Eagles did not challenge the play, and thankfully went on to win the game.

The question became, who on the Eagles coaching staff is deciding what to challenge, and what video are they watching to determine whether or not to challenge a call.

Eagles offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur went more in depth on the process, as well as why they made the decision not to challenge the call on Sunday.

“If we see something upstairs, when I say we, offensive or defensive coaches, if there’s something that warrants a challenge, they’ll get it to me and then I’ll communicate it to Coach [Kelly]. I’m assuming you’re talking about the one play that came up. From our view, and we got a lot of coaches upstairs, from our view where we were sitting in the press box, we saw two feet down and there was really nothing for us that we could see with the elbow as being down,” Shurmur said. “Now, had we had the benefit of the broadcast where they were able to cut it up, certainly we would have challenged, but we don’t get that. We do get some replays at times, but there are times when they’re not that timely.”

“We get a feed of some sort [in the booth], and I can’t always tell you what it is because I can’t ‑‑ I don’t know what it is. There are times when we get replays. There are times when we don’t. The big board that you see in the stadium is controlled by the home team, so when there’s something that’s significant for the home team, a lot of times you see a lot of replays. When it’s significant for the visiting team, a lot of times you don’t see much.”

According to Shurmur, it was less about what they saw in the booth, and more about when they saw it.

“If we’d have gotten ‑‑ in a timely way, if we’d have gotten the information you all saw, we were saying what the heck are they doing, we would have challenged the call,” he said. We were getting TV feeds. In this case here we didn’t get it in a timely way where we could have done anything about it. That’s it. And where we were sitting in the box, and there’s a lot of us coaches up there that watch the game. Now, offensively when we’re on defense, I’m getting ready with the next series and helping coach put together his next series of plays, we’re watching this, and then we cut back and forth. If somebody in there says, ‘Hey, Pat, we’ve got to challenge this,’ then they get me the information and I get it to coach.”

So could the Eagles just hire someone to sit and watch replays, and decide whether to challenge?

“Yeah, which we do, and if we’d have done it, that guy watching the TV wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it because it wasn’t timely. You know what I’m saying? In this instance that’s what happened,” Shurmur said.